Sleeping, or not

Cooper is a great sleeper. Sometimes he even sleeps all the way through the night, from 9:45pm to 6am or so. But most of the time he wakes up once, and sometimes two or three times. And when he does wake up, he wants to nurse. Won't go back to sleep without nursing. Screams like we are killing him if he doesn't nurse. You get the picture.

While mostly that is fine, I realized recently that we are setting ourselves up for a big issue here. You see, I need to start going on business trips pretty soon. And while I'm away, not only will Cooper not be eating well (because he hates bottles and only just started on cereals) but potentially he won't sleep.

So Matt and I agreed to a one week, extremely unpleasant, experiment. We'd all go to sleep as usual. Then, when and if Cooper woke up in the middle of the night, I'll go downstairs and sleep on the futon (to keep me from having a nervous breakdown) while Matt tried to get Cooper to fall back asleep. The agreement was that Matt wouldn't wake me up under any circumstances- this was between the two boys exclusively. Only after 6am would I help out, nurse, whatever.

The first night of this was utter torture. From 3 to 5am, Cooper and Matt battled it out- Cooper would scream, thrash, cry while Matt channeled his inner zen and just kept walking and rocking the little guy. But at 5am he fell asleep, and he slept until 8am. He was his regular happy chatty self at 8am, so as far as we could tell- no harm done.

The second night was funny. Cooper crashed out early (8:30) and slept until 5:30am. I figured that was within the spirit of the agreement, if not the law, so I fed him.

Third night was torture again. Cooper woke up at 4am, the power went out on our block at 4:45 because of a thunderstorm with high winds, and sometime after that the kid stopped shrieking and fell asleep. At about 7am he woke up happy as ever.

Last night, the fourth night, was the most interesting. He fell asleep at about 9:45 and work up at 4am. I retreated downstairs. I heard some complaints, brief screeches of annoyance, and some quiet snuffling. And then- nothing. All of a sudden it was 6:15am.

Matt confirmed my suspicions when I crawled back into bed in dawn's early light. Matt hadn't picked Cooper up out the crib because in Matt's his words, "he never seemed to need it." Instead, Cooper whined a bit, got a little mad, and then just fell back asleep.

I am wary of declaring victory, but this represents a huge change. While Cooper is great at falling asleep for his naps by himself (i.e. without rocking, walking or nursing) and sometimes he'll fall asleep for the night by himself, he has never ever fallen back asleep during the middle of the night without nursing (or two hours of unpleasantry). I know he's fully capable of sleeping through the night, because he does it naturally every once in a while. I just want it to be a habit, not an occasional plus.

Most of what we've read before embarking on this experiment said that changing the sleep patterns of a baby that is between 3 months and 1 year old takes 4 to 7 nights in a row of being consistent. Matt and I are hoping that this fourth night, where the little guy woke up, fussed about, and then fell back asleep, is indeed the beginning of a better thing.

I'll write an update on day 7 with the final results. Hopefully we'll have more like last night!